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Brett Smith writes "This morning the Free Software Foundation filed suit against Cisco for violations of the GPL and LGPL. There's a blog post with background about the case. The full complaint is available too." The short version, as excerpted by reader byolinux, is that "in the course of distributing various products under the Linksys brand Cisco has violated the licenses of many programs on which the FSF holds copyright, including GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library. In doing so, Cisco has denied its users their right to share and modify the software."

They allow abusive entities such as the Free Software Foundation to go after Cisco. If only the software was distributed without cumbersome GLP and LGPL licensing restrictions, and was truly free like software wants to be, then Cisco wouldn't have been forced to violate the licenses.

The BSD licence allows a developer to incorporate code into a proprietary project which may very well NOT be free (in any sense of the word) to use and which may well be under a licence (EULA) that very much covers use.

This is not to say that the BSD licence is flawed in any way, BTW: just that you're wrong and that the stated difference between the GPL and BSD licences is correct.

*sigh* Cueing the millionth identical replay of the exact same longwinded "BSD is freer because...." "No, GPL is freer because...." discussion subthread, in which the contributors get to restate the established position using the same old arguments to make the same old points, and neither side changes the other's mind.

Nothing wrong with that, but we don't need to hear it over and over and over again. Can't we just find an old subthread on the subject and link to that instead?:)

Or when are MS going to release the BSD code in Windows, including all enhancements?

So they can't change the BSD code in Windows, can they.

The user doesn't have to be a developer either. They can PAY a developer to do it. They are still the user. And, since the BSD allows the new developer to give the binary closed, the developer the user has paid can take the freedom to get someone else to do more work from the user who paid for it.

Isn't this rather misleading, considering that if you can't get at the source, the project isn't under the BSD license? It doesn't make the BSD license less free if a derivative is not BSD-licensed, it reflects on the license of the derivative. Furthermore, the original BSD-licensed code will always be available once it's been given up to the public (barring the project dying out altogether, which can just as easily happen to a GPL project).

I agree, copyright law is stifling innovation by preventing large American corporations from using the work of small, independent inventors without contributing in kind. Clearly there should be a fee to copyright works, to ensure that only properly-licensed corporations, using licensed, trusted compilers, can produce them.

All the customers of their product will also need to pay an extra 25% of the cost because they need to add redoing the wheel software development. Before Linksys started to use the GNU tools Hubs even small ones were expensive. After Linksys incorporated GNU you can for relatively cheap get a Router, Switch and Firewall which is good enough for most people and small businesses. If you choose GNU as a developer you really forfeit a lot of your rights to your code. So if a big corporation takes your code and uses it on a loophole in the licence, you don't have much recourse.

I suppose you're right. It's especially important that Cisco use quality, trusted software developed in-house or offshore, rather than trusting the danger-fraught open source community. Even aside from patent violations and other blatant disregard of others' IP rights, and the far lower quality of code produced by enthusiastic volunteers as compared to paid, apathetic employees, can you really trust that these self-described "hackers" haven't put in backdoors for their Russian friends? There's just no way to know with open source, and given all this, and studies showing that open source has an astronomically higher total cost of ownership, this is probably the last straw.

The way I see it, the free software community is just another company. We use each other's work, just like members of a company usually can, provided we agree on the ground rules. We work for communal benefit.

So let me ask you: If I get access to the windows source code via a contract (copyright) with Microsoft, should I be able to take Microsoft's work and sell it for personal profit? This is of course absurd. I see it as equally absurd that other companies should be able to take the open source community's work for free. They get the binaries and sources under a contract, they can follow it or their rights terminate.

A better example: Someone wrote a library that does something I want, and will license it to me for like $5 per copy for use in my software. Does this give me the right to take it for free (assuming I can) because I don't want to raise my product's prices to cover the increased cost? No. I can either accept their terms or not.

Of course I also don't buy all this omfg "free software good, bad software bad" crap. We're a company that works for its own interest, plain and simple. Just one that produces products far more to my liking, far more intuitive to my (granted, odd) mind, and far more useful in my line of work (CS research)

I see it as equally absurd that other companies should be able to take the open source community's work for free. They get the binaries and sources under a contract, they can follow it or their rights terminate.

Actually, this is where you got it wrong. You don't get a contract to use GPL'd code; you get a license. Ask your friendly local corporate lawyer to explain the difference.

I know you're joking, but you could just as easily say that copyright law is stifling innovation by preventing small, independent inventors from using the work of large American corporations without contributing in kind -- the law works both ways.

They allow abusive entities such as the Free Software Foundation to go after Cisco.

I know you're just trying to be funny, but what's worth noticing is that this is the FSF's first lawsuit:

[...] Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF. "In the fifteen years we've spent enforcing our licenses, we've never gone to court before. We have always managed to get the companies we have worked with to take their obligations seriously.

Isn't that interesting? I'm not sure whether Cisco decided to call the FSF's bluff or whether they have some other thinking behind their decisions; but I know that this is going to be interesting to watch.

IIRC, the GPL has been upheld in court before, so (depending on the details of Cisco's actions) the FSF is probably in a good position to win.

Imagine, for a moment, that various $BIG_COMPANIES decide they want to be able to use code from free software in their products without a fuss, while still keeping protection for their own code.

So, what they do is approach various national governments, WIPO, etc., and have copyright protection removed from source code.

The companies then sit back with the fact that their binary code is still copyright protected, and their source code is safely hidden under "trade secret" protections . . . but the source code of free software is neither copyrighted nor secret. So the companies can take the known, non-copyrighted source code from free software, and combine it with their secret source code to make their copyrighted binary blobs . . .

If you read the article, you'll see that they did. They've been working with Cisco for the last five years on it, but according to the FSF never became fully compliant:

As we always do in violation cases, we began a process of working with Cisco to help them understand their obligations under our licenses, and how they could come into compliance. Early on it seemed likely that we could resolve the issues without any fuss.

While we were working on that case, though, new reports came in. Other Cisco products were not in full compliance either. We started talking to the company about those as wellâ"and that's how a five-years-running game of Whack-a-Mole began. New issues were regularly discovered before we could finish addressing the old ones.

During this entire time, Cisco has never been in full compliance with our licenses. At first glance, the situation might look good. It's not difficult to find "source code" on the Linksys site. But you only have to dig a little deeper to find the problems. Those source code downloads are often incomplete or out-of-date. Cisco also provides written offers for source, but we regularly hear about requests going unfulfilled.

Despite our best efforts, Cisco seems unwilling to take the steps that are necessary to come into compliance and stay in compliance. We asked them to notify customers about previous violations and inform them about how they can now obtain complete source code; they have refused to do this, along with the other reasonable demands we have made to consider this case settled. The FSF has put in too many hours helping the company fix the numerous mistakes it's made over the years. Cisco needs to take responsibility for its own license compliance.

According to the complaint: "inthe Firmware for Linksysâ(TM) models EFG120, EFG250, NAS200, SPA400, WAG300N, WAP4400N,WIP300, WMA11B, WRT54GL, WRV200, WRV54G, and WVC54GC, and in the program Quick-VPN."

Part of this was a chain reaction. Linksys was a low end router company and they adopted Linux to save money on development. As such, they had no need to cripple their routers to not compete against their high end brand, since they didn't have one. Unfortunately for Cisco, who bought them, they do have a high end brand, and releasing the source for their low end brand that people have tuned to outperform their high end routers (with overclocking and mods) is not really in their best interest (illegal, yes, in best interest, no).

Personally, I think they were gambling as long as possible that the FSF wouldn't file a suit.

I routinely deal with VxWorks 5.x at work, and it's a nightmarish POS, especially its networking support. I'm assuming Linksys must be using 6.x or a HIGHLY customized 5.x variant with an alternative network stack for their product line, given that the standard 5.x network stack is a halfassed port the 1990 4.4BSD "Reno" release with no new features and a LOT of new bugs.

It is shit. The rev 8 hardware with vxWherks crashed when I tried to configure it. Crashed when the load got too high. Crashed when I would change one minor thing. Crashed if more than two wireless connections were made.

I took it back and got a Buffalo before that black dress wearing Texas judge made it illegal.

I know full well where the tech came from, I supported the former Aironet employees for 3 years after they were bought by Cisco =) The VxWorks stuff was more stable than IOS at least for the first year or two after IOS was ported and if our AP's at work are any indication that's still true as of a few years ago (noone is using them but they still crash once in a while).

p.s.
An interesting aside, the VxWorks software was also easier to maintain since it was written in modern C++ vs old straight C for IOS. This became very clear one day when a particular large school called and said all of their AP's were rebooting randomly at fairly short intervals. It turns out they had a HUGE flat network with 28k+ visible MAC addresses. This was more than the AP's were speced for but Cisco couldn't just let a large customer's install die, so after they figured out the cause they had to come up with a solution. For the VxWorks code they simply modified the MAC table class and recompiled, a patch was available within a few hours of the trouble starting. The IOS patch was much more difficult with tons of searching through header files and later after the first patch failed searching through the entire codebase. The small minority of new AP's which were running IOS were flashed in the field to VxWorks with an unsupported dev tool because officially the 'upgrade' to IOS was one way.

I've worked at Cisco, and the general attitude among many (not all) is that they don't care about GPL violations. Linux is used as it's the fastest path to get the products out.

The reason why this will be unsettling to Cisco is because some of the products have integrated key IOS files in order to retain backwards compatibility. Which means that those files now fall under the GPL. And the only way to integrate them is to use various Linux API's. That is, key files are derived works from the GPL. From the bootstrap code on up.

But, since these files are key to IOS as well, one could take the view that IOS is now under the GPL.

One could try to maintain that those files need to be dual-licensed. However, though some hold that to be valid, I don't believe such a dual license has ever been held up in court. So that might get interesting if the FSF wanted to push it. In any case, it could be a useful bargaining chip.

In any case, those files don't have the appropriate copyrights stating how they are licensed.

The amusing part here is that this has come about mostly because of Cisco's dedication to using as much H1-B/L1 labor as possible. It's been those guys who have mostly (not entirely) done this work in order to get things done quickly. And believe me, protestations about the licensing have been ignored completely when they've been raised. Hack-it-in quickly and damn the lawyers has been the attitude.

It's very amusing to see that Cisco's use of cheap labor has come back to bite them in a way that has the potential to cost them more money than if they had done things in the right fashion originally.

The Linksys WRVS4400N Router (a distinctly post Cisco acquisition product), violates the GPL in that it distributes a binary only U-Boot, and the sources for it are not available. In this case, I believe the board maker(Star Semiconductors), are also in violation, as the people at Linksys I e-mailed said that they were only provided with a binary of it by Star Semi. But in either case, I have a router that I have all the source for, except the source for the binary only Marvell TopDog Wireless Card, and t

I've worked at Cisco, and the general attitude among many (not all) is that they don't care about GPL violations. Linux is used as it's the fastest path to get the products out.

The reason why this will be unsettling to Cisco is because some of the products have integrated key IOS files in order to retain backwards compatibility. Which means that those files now fall under the GPL. And the only way to integrate them is to use various Linux API's. That is, key files are derived works from the GPL. From the bootstrap code on up.

But, since these files are key to IOS as well, one could take the view that IOS is now under the GPL.

The same thing applies to Symbian - at one point they statically linked GPL code to the OS Kernel, so technically the whole OS should be GPL'd. Which means they ought to release all the source code to customers years ago. This is not something they want to do - their recent announcements have been about releasing the source code to selected components over time.

I was under the impression that if you used a GPL library (statically linked or not) your program must be covered by the GPL. On the other hand, if the library was LGPL your assessment would be fine... I think.

The GPL can not force you to relicense your code. None of Cisco's code or Symbians code has to be released. However, unless they chose to relicense it then they are in violation of the GPL and have no license to distribute the GPL'd software.

So they're committing copyright infringement. They can be forced to stop distributing their products, they can be sued for damages, but under no circumstance can they be forced to turn over code-- though that might be the easiest way to settle the lawsuit.

They can be forced to stop distributing their products, they can be sued for damages, but under no circumstance can they be forced to turn over code-- though that might be the easiest way to settle the lawsuit.

And also the easiest way to stay in business. If you wind up as a large scale GPL violator then the only sane option is likely to be releasing the code. If it's basically a choice between not distributing the code and going out of business or releasing the code and hoping it's all OK then a company can only really do the latter.

That's fine for hardware companies like Cisco and Nokia who mainly derive value from their hardware but I'm sure it'd kill a proprietary software company.

"But, since these files are key to IOS as well, one could take the view that IOS is now under the GPL."

No no no.

Cisco has violated copyright law by distributing GPLed FSF code under terms other than specified in the only available license. The ownership and licensing of IOS code is not affected by this in any way. This is the past.

Now for the future. If Cisco wants to keep distributing IOS code mixed with FSF code, there is only one way of doing it. That is to release the code under the GPL, because the FSF doesn't offer any other licenses. Only the IOS code which is mixed with FSF code needs to be released under the GPL. This has no effect on any other IOS code (older or in other products or whatever).

The amusing part here is that this has come about mostly because of Cisco's dedication to using as much H1-B/L1 labor as possible. It's been those guys who have mostly (not entirely) done this work in order to get things done quickly.

This is an interesting statement. If my experience with on/offshoring at large companies is any indication (and I assure you it is), the H1-B guys were simply taking orders from a US-based manager or director. Those kinds of decisions are not made in Pune or Gurgaon.

The reason why this will be unsettling to Cisco is because some of the products have integrated key IOS files in order to retain backwards compatibility. Which means that those files now fall under the GPL.

This is false. Releasing GPL code can never automatically force other code to be licensed under the GPL. What it does mean is that someone was distributing code without a license, and may be liable for copyright infringement damages. If they *had* licensed their other code under the GPL, they wouldn't have been liable.

In general, a number of GPL-using authors tend to be okay with someone who has infringed doing a subsequent GPL-based release as a way to clear the air (and often then forgive previous damage caused by earlier infringements), but (a) they need not forgive the damages in such a case, (b) the infringer need never do a GPL-based release of their own code, instead simply paying damages.

The FSF does not need to pursue such damages. Given that their goal is to make a point while not scaring away potential FOSS users, I would imagine they would seek damages that were neither trivial nor crippling. Damages appropriate to what Cisco actually did, unlike evil record companies and their ilk.

If I were in the FSF shoes then I'd go for every penny I could get. They need to drive home the message that if companies want to play the Free Software game, they have to give back. If companies think they can rip off GPL software and then get off cheap five years later then they wont respect the GPL. Remember Cisco would have gained significant advantage in terms of saved development costs by ripping off the GPLed software named in the suit.

I don't think that would scare too many firms away. The no-licensing cost aspect of GPL software makes it too tempting for firms who don't necessarily gain any advantage from using proprietary software. Much easier to just slap something together using Free Software and pay a programmer to customise it for whatever product it is you want to sell.

Based on the background, seems like Cisco have 5 years to essentially send an email to all their known customers and post a notice on their website to a public ftp site with the relevant software. Am I oversimplifying?

Look at what the FSF is asking for: an injunction to stop Cisco from distributing any more code, pay damages, give previous profits to the FSF, and pay the FSF's costs.

This is not exactly "put some code on the web for download."

If you mean that Linksys/Cisco could have avoided this at any time in the past five years by releasing the code, you are probably right. The FSF is easy to get along with. It is anybody's guess what they need to offer the FSF now to make it go away.

If you mean that Linksys/Cisco could have avoided this at any time in the past five years by releasing the code, you are probably right.

If you read the complaint [fsf.org], the FSF acknowledges that Linksys* has already released most of the code they are required to release. The big problem is that Linksys has a habit of releasing the binary versions first, then neglecting to release the source until the FSF complains and dragging their feet even then.

The bottom line is that the FSF wants Linksys to be more proactive about releasing source files (by appointing a Free Software Compliance Officer) and to pay them for past abuse.

* The complaint specifically and exclusively references Linksys products. It says nothing about IOS or any Cisco-branded products.

Cisco / Linksys set themselves up for a fall here. If they wanted code they could just rip off and use whilst largely ignoring the license, why on earth didn't they just use BSD code?
These are large companies, presumably they have lawyers.
But they're acting like some kid who downloads an image from Google Image Search and uses it on their webpage - "I downloaded it off the web for free so I can just use it right?"

The problem is that a corporation is made up of people, and individual people can easily make the mistake of using the wrong code. If you hire some intern who writes something that uses gccor other GPL code, there might not be anybody who notices and realizes what's going on. I see it as very easy to get GPL'd code into a large project if you don't have the right people with the right knowledge in place to prevent it. IMHO, this may be especially true since I could see the developers of the firmware being e

It's a funny thing, but my experience with BSD in a corporate environment is that it doesn't end up as much of a success. There are some exceptions, but even in the case of OS-X, Apple seems to have completely failed to build the community they wanted at the beginning. Most other cases, starting with BSD/OS (BSD 386) [wikipedia.org] and going through IPSO, Ipsilon's [wikipedia.org] home grown BSD based OS, and many others you haven't heard of (AlchemyOS etc.) end up completely dead. Even Microsoft's TCP stack seems to have been rewritte

There are companies that contribute greatly top open source, like SUN for example (OpenOffice, Open Solaris,...). And there are companies out there that leech off of it and even refuse to open up if they are asked to do so by the FSF.

Next time you make a purchase decision you should take that into account if your company is using oss.

That sucks. I'm glad I have a couple of WRT54GL boxes, because I can easily see the entire range being dumped if the FSF wins. It's a lose lose sort of situation. FSF has talked to CISCO about this repeatedly and there has been no resolution. Now CISCO refuses to talk so the FSF has to persue the matter or else allow the GPL be flouted. If it persues the matter CISCO/Linksys may well just dump the products but if it doesn't there's a very bad precedent set for the GPL being abused, and FSF has no teeth in a

That would probably just hurt Cisco/Linksys in the long run. The last two Linksys routers I bought, I bought mainly because I knew I could install modified firmware on (dd-wrt). If they no longer offer routers with this capability then I'll simply stop buying Linksys gear and start shopping their competitors products who still use GPL'd code and lets me install custom firmware. Granted, I'm only one individual but you can bet I'll also mention this fact to family/friends (and as a professional sysadmin I

The FSF has filed suit against Cisco for copyright violations. Cisco distributed code owned by the FSF without permission.

Yes, Cisco could easily be distributing with permission, and hence legally, if they followed the requirements of the GPL. Instead, they chose to distribute without permission, a violation of federal copyright law.

The existence of this kind of discussion (regardless who has the reason) is what scares a lot to many managers that are not interested (or are not able) to get the correct-freedom-flavor philosophy, so they end avoiding free software as a whole....

In their minds, everything, if free, has a catch... well, the catch is that legalese with the freedom concept, that after a long time can return and "destroy" (that is, force to open your code) the competitive advantage secrets or whatever is called.

I'm really not sure at the end what approach will provide more benefits to the users, the developers, the proprietary software enterprises (yes, they pay the checks for a lot of people), or humanity as a whole.

These very same companies would vigorously prosecute anyone who violates their own intellectual property rights.
Oh, and you repeat the commonly believed false claim that a GPL violator can be forced to open his or her own code. This is incorrect. The violator is a copyright infringer, loses the license to modify or distribute the code in question, and can be forced to pay damages. But the violator cannot be forced to open-source any of its own code (though in many cases, the FSF and others have accepte

If FSF forces them into compliance without cisco feeling some pain or regret then i suspect they wont hesitate to repeat their deeds.

I understand FSF wants to be the good guys,they have principles and ethics, but Cisco is fighting from a different rulebook, one where the winner is the one with the most money, not the highest morals.

The only way Cisco and other similar companies will accept defeat is you beat them on their own turf, playing by their own rules. That means take their money, as much as you can get.

But just enough to pay for the litigation hassle. Judges (usually) pay close attention to the level of courtesy and maturity shown by the litigants prior to filing the suit. By bending over backwards being nice and trying to work things out, FSF has set themselves on the moral high ground, which (usually) pays back big time in the judge's decision.

Linux firmware is bigger than VxWorks one. When Linksys cut off memory and flash, they had to go VxWorks.

I can't honestly believe that it costs that much extra for 8MB of flash compared to 2MB of flash. You can run DD-WRT on there, but it requires jumping through some hoops first. Plus, it makes it more difficult to install any optware packages, etc.

The really weird thing is that the WRT54G, with Linux, cost $50 years ago. The new WRT54G, with less hardware, cost -- guess what -- $50 today! Or, alternatively, the WRT54GL costs more than $50. Isn't hardware supposed to get cheaper and better over time, rather than worse or more expensive?

Don't buy a linksys, but do buy one of the ones with similar hardware.

When I bought my Asus WL-500g Premium it shipped with the complete modified linux source in a folder on the CD that contained the usual windows-crapware you seem to get with every product these days (you know, the outdated copy of acrobat reader, some documentation wrapped in a shiny executable and such).

I did install OpenWRT on it, and I'm very happy with the result. I'm also happy with Asus for actually shipping the source, but I never did write them a line and told them. Maybe I should.

The thing about these lawsuits is that I hope the FSF tried to resolve the violations outside of court before litigating.

If only there were some way to find out. It's hard to say for sure, but based on this:

As we always do in violation cases, we began a process of working with Cisco to help them understand their obligations under our licenses, and how they could come into compliance. Early on it seemed likely that we could resolve the issues without any fuss.

The thing about these lawsuits is that I hope the FSF tried to resolve the violations outside of court before litigating. Remember: court is supposed to be a last resort, not first recourse.

According to the blog post linked in the summary, the FSF has been working with Cisco since 2003 to resolve the issue of GPL compliance, and has received only halfhearted attempts on their part to come into compliance. We're only seeing the FSF's side of the story here, of course, but assuming that they're telling it like it is, the FSF tried many other avenues before deciding to file the lawsuit.

"We began working with Cisco in 2003 to help them establish a process for complying with our software licenses, and the initial changes were very promising," explained Brett Smith, licensing compliance engineer at the FSF. "Unfortunately, they never put in the effort that was necessary to finish the process, and now five years later we have still not seen a plan for compliance. As a result, we believe that legal action is the best way to restore the rights we grant to all users of our software."

But this time, they seem to be pissed (from the stuff they filled with the court, the URI is in the press release):

"Prayer to Relief"[...]
(2) That the Court order Defendant to pay Plaintiff's actual and consequential damages in-curred, in an amount to be determined at trial or, in the alternative, statutory damages as set forth in 17 U.S.C. 504(c);
(3) That the Court order Defendant to account for and disgorge to Plaintiff all profits derived by Defendant from its unlawful acts;[...]

This is why free licenses such as BSD should be adopted for any commercial project.

Cisco didn't "adopt" the GPL; quite the opposite, they're trying to avoid it. However, they put *themselves* in a position where they'll either be forced to or be guilty of breaking the license terms.

Avoid viral licenses such as *GPL.

Who should? The people who wrote the original code? Maybe they don't want companies like Cisco using it if it means closing the code off and not returning anything. That's their choice.

Cisco? They knew- or should have known- the implications of the GPL and had- as you imply- the choice of using BSD-licensed software instead.

Perhaps there wasn't a BSD-licensed version of what they were looking for? If so, tough shit! No-one's under any obligation to provide them with that for free. Cisco could of course pay someone to write it (and release it under the BSD license if they so wish). Or they're free to use the GPLed code and adhere to the terms it was released under.

But they thought they could get away with using the no-cost GPL code without honouring the obligations. They knew what they were doing.

It could be a misunderstanding of the GPL or bad advice from an expert. Why, if I asked a question about the GPL, I would get dozens of posts each having their own and differing "expert" opinion of what is meant.

Yes, it could be a misunderstanding. Especially when FSF has spent five years communicating with Cisco trying to resolve the issue peacefully. If there's a misunderstanding, the people at Cisco need to get some working brains...

There's a lot of posts accusing of Cisco of intentionally violating the GPL; even an alleged ex-employee saying that Cisco "didn't care".

It could be a misunderstanding of the GPL or bad advice from an expert. Why, if I asked a question about the GPL, I would get dozens of posts each having their own and differing "expert" opinion of what is meant.

...Generally prefixed with "IANAL"...

Well, Cisco has to consult some people who do not anal... Those people should have a much less ambiguous view of the GPL.

This could send the wrong message. If you Use bootleg proprietary software and make a lot of money from it you will get Sued. Details of the reasons will fade just the face the proprietary software is considered to Risky for a corporate environment. You better off getting a License from GPL as you can choose to agree to the terms before hand, then going with a product which wile may be backed by a big company will have a bunch of people ready to pounce on you if you make this code successful.

"Slashdotters" want the software to be freely distributed, freely used, and freely modified. Corporations use copyright to prevent that, so Slashdotters are against them. The FSF uses copyright to promote that, so Slashdotters support it. That's not hypocritical at all: in all cases Slashdotters are trying to work towards the same goal. You only thought it was hypocritical because you weren't looking at the whole issue.

It's not about "the law," though. Laws are reflection of society, not the other way around -- you don't avoid doing something because it's against the law, you make it against the law because it was a bad thing to do in the first place. But because of this, laws don't always get it right. It used to be illegal to aid an escaping slave, for example. But does that make such an action wrong? Of course not (unless you're a KKK member)! Laws should be followed when they are just, but when they are unjust they should be broken.

By your logic, ambulance drivers should lose their driver's licenses and soldiers should be jailed for murder.

It is a case of "Do as we say, not as we do".

Wanna bet? Here's "what we say:"

"We want users of information to be able to freely modify and share it without restriction."

Copyright holders of proprietary information (like the RIAA) try to prevent it from being free to modify and share without restriction, so we oppose them. "What we do" is completely consistent with "what we say" in this case.

Copyright holders of Free information (like the FSF) try to force it to be free to modify and share without restriction, so we support them. "What we do" is also completely consistent with "what we say" in this case too!

Now try that with a Siemens router... clearly running Linux, yet they go to even less effort than Linksys to comply with the license (which is to say, getting source is impossible). Why is Linksys in trouble while Siemens gets ignored?

1. They only copied, NOT STOLE OR VIOLATED ANYTHING, a couple of bits.
The right to copy is the problem copyright seeks to address. To copy without permission is a copright violation. FSF hasnt claimed that cisco stole something ?

2. They wouldn't have bought it anyway.
The yhad to buy it or an equivalent product, if not they wouldnt have been able to sell their product.

3. The FSF is not going to give an type of damages to the people who origianlly created the works.
Copyleft has never been about pr